The Radical Luhmann

by Hans-Georg Moeller

Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) was a German sociologist and system theorist who wrote on law, economics, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love. Luhmann advocated a radical constructivism and antihumanism, or "grand theory," to explain society within a universal theoretical framework. Nevertheless, despite being an iconoclast, Luhmann is viewed as a political conservative. Hans-Georg Moeller challenges this legacy, repositioning Luhmann as an explosive thinker critical of Western humanism.Moeller focuses on Luhmann's shift from philosophy to theory, which introduced new perspectives on the contemporary world. For centuries, the task of philosophy meant transforming contingency into necessity, in the sense that philosophy enabled an understanding of the necessity of everything that appeared contingent. Luhmann pursued the opposite—the transformation of necessity into contingency. Boldly breaking with the heritage of Western thought, Luhmann denied the central role of humans in social theory, particularly the possibility of autonomous agency. In this way, after Copernicus's cosmological, Darwin's biological, and Freud's psychological deconstructions of anthropocentrism, he added a sociological "fourth insult" to human vanity.A theoretical shift toward complex system-environment relations helped Luhmann "accidentally" solve one of Western philosophy's primary mind-body dualism. By pulling communication into the mix, Luhmann rendered the Platonic dualist heritage obsolete. Moeller's clarity opens such formulations to general understanding and directly relates Luhmannian theory to contemporary social issues. He also captures for the first time a Luhmannian attitude toward society and life, defined through the cultivation of modesty, irony, and equanimity.

Genres: Philosophy, Sociology

184 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t start reading this book because I was interested in Luhmann, I didn’t even know Luhmann. The reason I picked this book up was that ever since reading The Moral Fool I have been following Moeller's work. I’ve read two of his works on Daoism and am planning to read his work on Profilicity soon, but before that I have to complete his “Luhmann Explained”, which in fact was the book I started on initially but found “The Radical Luhmann” to be the easier read so jumped on to this. If you are already entrenched in some form of Systems Theory you might not be impressed by this work, but I as a dilettante found this quite useful as I have been attempting to step out of the humanist tradition that I am entrenched in for a long while now. There are criticisms that I have of this tradition: that it trades in sweet ideals and hopes rather than theories that attempt to describe the complexities of Society and both sides of the political discourse has its foundation in humanist ideals. I found that Moeller's book on The Philosophy of Daodejing here and there pointing to the non humanist framework that undergirds Daoism, yet I found some kind of sense making theory that can deal with our contemporary society lacking in my attempt, all I had were a few handful of allusions to the wisdom of certain Ancient philosophies. Perhaps here Luhmann’s systems theory could help me. To be frank I don’t want to make grand pronouncements here since I have only read one and a half books regarding Systems Theory, but it is true that this book in many ways has opened up for a new way/ways of looking at the world.

[Henrik · Rating 2 out of 5]

The point of insisting that someone is truly, really, deeply, no-really-trust-me a radical is to close off criticism. Who wouldn't want to be radical? Habermas! What a dork, am I right? What are his views again? It doesn't matter: he opposed Luhmann for his self-aware, ironic radicalism (not, mind you, a fatalism, even though, ironically, it seems like one); so he’s not part of the radicals—our group. Same goes for those analyticists in the philosophy of scientism, whatever they're up to nowadays.

There are some neat analogies to ecology though, I'll give it that.

[Ravi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A basic overview of Luhmann's theory. While it is pitched at a very low level and may be of limited use for some as a result, it is also quite funny, something one is unlikely to expect in a book about Luhmann. It might be best to read the biographical note at the end of the book first. I was pleasantly surprised to find a connection between Deleuze's intervention on the linguistic turn in the Logic of Sense and Luhmann. I do not possess enough background to comment but I would be shocked if there were a funnier book about Luhmann available.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's alright. Moeller gives a good basic, if somewhat sensationalized, introduction to some of Luhmann's ideas and his relation to philosophy and the canon of Western thought.
But there's no substitute for the man himself, and this book really pales in comparison to Introduction to Systems Theory, which is what you should probably read instead.

[amelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

note to those intrigued by the book's title: 'radical' refers to luhmann's posited theoretical radicality, rather than any political radicality. what little politics luhmann declared amounts to a kind of unorthodox functionalist horseshoe-theory centrism. regardless, a highly digestible introduction to social systems theory

[Benji]

This is an easy book. It does accommodate those who prefer a quick and easy read, yet do not want to die without a taste of systems theory.

[Keith Peavy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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